Driving through the Belgian province of Limburg we noticed the old mining museum and I could not resist taking a few shots of the old reminders of times gone by. Then we went to the Dutch province of Limburg, which is the most southerly province of the Netherlands, hugging the borders of Germany and Belgium. We went to the South of Limburg which is a very scenic area. It is hilly,and has beautiful countryside to enjoy. Wonderful huge farmhouses almost looking like castles with pretty courtyards and orchards with old (and not so old) fruit trees...In summer it is very busy with tourists and better be avoided!

Thanks to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwolle :Zwolle is a municipality and the capital city of the province of Overijssel, Netherlands, 120 kilometers northeast of Amsterdam. Zwolle has about 115,000 citizens.Archaeological findings indicate that the area surrounding Zwolle has been inhabited for a long time. A woodhenge that was found in the Zwolle-Zuid suburb in 1993 was dated to the Bronze Age period.[2][3] During the Roman era, the area was inhabited by Salian Franks.

The modern city was founded around 800 A.D. by Frisian merchants and troops of Charlemagne.[4] The name Zwolle is derived from the word Suolle, which means "hill" (cf. the English cognate verb "to swell"). This refers to an incline in the landscape between the four rivers surrounding the city, IJssel, Vecht, Aa and Zwarte Water. The hill was the only piece of land that would remain dry during the frequent floodings of the rivers. Zwolle was established on that incline.

Emmen is the largest town in the Drenthe region and the second largest town in the Northern Netherlands. It has approximately 105,000 inhabitants and is the leading city for education in this part of the country.It is internationally famous for its “Noorder Dierenpark” a zoo that attracts almost two million visitors each year. It was a very bright sunny day and the deep shadows of the trees did not really help to get really good pics. I hope you will enjoy them anyway!

The province of Zeeland is in fact one big river delta, situated as it is at the mouth of several big rivers. Most of the province lies beneath sea level and was reclaimed from the sea by the people over time. What used to be a muddy landscape flooded at high tide and reappearing at low tide, first became the scene of small man-made hills that would stay dry at all times. Later the people of the province would connect the hills by creating dikes, which lead to a chain of dry land that later grew into bigger islands and gave the province its current shape. The shape of the islands has been changing through time both by the hands of man and nature. The North Sea flood of 1953 claimed vast amounts of land that were only partially reclaimed. The subsequent construction of the Delta Works also changed the face of the province. The infrastructure (although very distinct by the amount of bridges, tunnels and dams) hasn't shaped the province as much as the geography of the province has shaped the infrastructure. The dams, tunnels and bridges that are currently a vital part of the province's road system were constructed over the space of decades and came to replace old ferry lines. The final touch to this process came in 2003 when the Westerschelde tunnel was opened. It was the first solid connection between both banks of the Westerschelde and ended the era of water separating the islands and peninsulas of Zeeland.

Flevoland is a province of the Netherlands named after Lacus Flevo, a name recorded in Roman sources for a large inland lake at the southern end of the later formed Zuiderzee. The province was established on January 1, 1986; the twelfth province of the country, with Lelystad as its capital. After a flood in 1916, it was decided that the Zuiderzee, an inland sea within the Netherlands, would be enclosed and reclaimed: the Zuiderzee Works started. In 1932, the Afsluitdijk was completed, which closed off the sea completely. The Zuiderzee was subsequently called IJsselmeer (lake at the end of the river IJssel).